


hey, murderer

by watery_sun



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Family Dynamics, Fluff, Kink Discovery, Light Bondage, Praise Kink, Shameless Smut, Strap-Ons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:02:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29110500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watery_sun/pseuds/watery_sun
Summary: You know she can’t absolve you. It doesn’t stop you from telling her, again and again -“I want to be good for you.”Uncertainty knits along her brows. She cups your cheek. “What makes you think you aren’t?”
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 139





	hey, murderer

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe one day, I'll stop writing about trauma recovery through the lens of sex. Not today. Title is from "Fire Escape" by Half Moon Run.
> 
> As always, feel free to ask if you want anything else tagged.

It’s always in the morning, in that first sliver of consciousness, in the way you wake up.

Tension leeches down your arm and into your remaining fingers. Into their vacancies too. It’s old crackles and flickers of energy - for pulling a bow string taught, for steadying the butt of a rifle in the curve of your shoulder; for grasping, clawing, ripping, scratching -

Sometimes you don’t even need a nightmare to do it. Sometimes you’re just awake, and the softness of the mattress is grass or moss, or the couch in the theatre. All those dredges, the detritus that never quite leaves, that piles up.

It’s not like this every time. Sometimes it laps at your shore, present but ignorable. But this morning, it overflows. It’s pulled high, like some cruelly cyclic tide. 

It feels fated, this dip down, and after a few weeks that were so high. Dina’s birthday: how she smiled up at you, soot smeared on one cheek; held you close, smelling of woodsmoke, wrapped her arms around you and dragged you out to dance with her. Laughed low in your ear as you closed your eyes and leaned into her, firelight dancing on the backs of your eyelids.

If you squeeze your eyes tightly enough now, you can almost conjure up that sweet burn again.

Now, there’s just cream-colored sunlight that splashes against the walls. You roll over, moving only to settle back into soft warmth, trying to shake the tension from your limbs. The light illuminates the mess of black hair beside you. 

Dina snuffles, eyes fluttering, as if the tautness in her body has roused her too. Immediately you feel a crest of regret, at how intimately you know each other.

You tamp it down. Allow yourself the indulgence of wrapping her closer, of exhaling against the crown of her head. She makes a soft sound in the back of her throat, a comfortable sound. Her voice is scratchy when she speaks.

“Sleep okay?”

“Mmm.”

Dina draws away slightly now, appraising you with tired, puffy eyes. Her bangs drift into her face and you brush them back, letting your fingers rest around the curve of her ear. She smells like something sweet and flowery, maybe that new shampoo she traded for last week. The worry lines between her eyebrows don’t soften, and you frown.

She traces your profile with the pads of her fingers, along your cheekbones. You incline your head, kiss her fingers. Over her shoulder, you see a thick book on her bedside table. The marker in its pages probably hasn’t moved forward even twenty or so pages in the past week. Guilt swoops in your stomach.

“Hard morning?” 

You drop your head into the cushions again and grumble, dodging your tiredness and depression. Dina nuzzles you, unfazed. You withdraw.

There’s no judgement in her expression, no measurement or comparison. Just steady observation, as the flat of her palm presses against your cheek.

So you nod into her hand, because you won’t deny her this - this glance into your mind, a place that you never expected Dina would willingly go. This place that makes you into something you are not, takes all your pieces and augments them through warped glass until even you cannot recognize yourself -

Dina wiggles closer, and you see the detritus of sleep in her eyes, a tiredness that never really fades. 

“Okay?” she murmurs, and you nod, shifting so she can wrap herself around you. Her hair is sun-warmed and soft under your nose, tickling slightly, and you resist the urge to sneeze by exhaling against the crown of her head.

“I’ve got you,” Dina sighs against your neck. She tucks you closer like a treasured thing, like something that is not broken.

* * *

JJ won’t stop asking you about his seventh birthday, and it makes you smile. How you curl away from him and back over your secret. How you lean over to Dina and talk in stage whispers, and watch your son’s sharp eyes widen. Interactions with him seem to exist at the very, very top of all the detritus that is your mind, light and unburdened.

Still, your shame tails you.

You’ve yet to put a gun into his hand, although he knows all the basic safety mechanics by now - knows that weapons are not toys. You see that knowledge settle heavily into his brow whenever you leave the house with a hunting rifle slung over your shoulder.

But right now, JJ’s forehead is smooth as he tugs you into the living room for another guitar lesson. Expectation alights on his face and you perch on the couch cushions. He strums a C chord a little too hard, slips on the fretboard. The sound that comes out bleeds into something flat. 

JJ frowns, makes a _huff_ sound in disappointment and impatience. He is so much his mother in that moment, but also - if you let yourself look a little closer - so much of you as well.

You adjust his fingers slightly on the fretboard, encourage him to try again. You had to do this hundreds of times before it sounded good, you say to him. 

“Hundreds?” he says, voice pitching up in disbelief, and you feel guilt rise in you.

You’ve never taught anyone anything. If you look back, you largely feel that your entire life has been stamping in the negative space around others. There’s not much you’ve added, except for a definition for what is not there.

So you hate that you nod, hate that this good thing is not something that will come so easy to your son.

Later, Dina has a smudge of flour on one freckled cheek, and you lean in to kiss it off. The kitchen smells like baking and sweets, the windows steamed from the warmth. You direct yourself away from the playful shrieks that drift in from the backyard, focus on frosting the little loaf of cake that you’ve popped out of its baking pan. 

“I was thinking,” Dina murmurs, and you look up. She angles a cupcake between her fingers, trying to tip her butter knife so the frosting is drawn up to a swirled peak. She worries her lower lip between her teeth. There’s a smudge of something chalky and light-colored on the sleeve of the hoodie she’s wearing - your hoodie, you realize. 

And sure, you’ve been married to her for a few years at this point. But it still surprises you when you see Dina take on these pieces of you, wrap them into herself so simply.

You can’t resist. “That’s new for you,” you smile, laughing as she aims a kick at you under the table.

“I was _thinking_ ,” she continues, “we could get away one weekend. Just you and me?”

You deflate slightly. You’ve been picking up extra shifts, trying to exhaust yourself so that you can earn real sleep instead of a half-awake, grey limbo. These old world indulgences, sweet, normal things - they feel like things that you never should have been afforded. 

Dina continues, setting one cupcake down on a plate and reaching for another. “Your son’s been demanding a weekend with his grandparents for weeks now.” Your heart flips over, like it does every time she refers to JJ as _your son_. 

You tell her you’ll think about it.

JJ twirls under the little paper crown that Dina has made for him. He throws himself at you after he unwraps your present, a piece of paper with the words “swimming lessons voucher” scrawled on it. 

“What’s a voucher?” he asks, eyes bright as he flips the paper over. Just like him to lead with emotion, with joy, and ask about the mechanics later.

The expected shame at not getting a _thing_ for your son rises, but his expression is so bright and happy that it’s dispelled. You remind yourself that you’ve gotten him something for the future, something that can only be imagined at this point. A promise, as a gift.

He and his friends drag their sleeping bags into the living room when night falls. You lay down with Dina, but go downstairs for a few hours. You’re unable to stop yourself, lulled and sparked by the knowledge that your usual routine does not hold tonight. 

You settle on the couch and watch the rhythmic rise and fall of JJ’s chest, how one of his arms is thrown haphazardly above his head. 

You wake up with a quilt tucked around you, to the sounds of hushed voices. Your vision clears in time to see Dina shoo JJ back towards his sleeping bag. She bends to whisper something in his ear, looking over at you as she does so.

You hear her step around the couch, feel her fingers warm in your hair. You roll over, meet her eyes. “He was worried about you,” she murmurs. “Saw you down here without me.” You can feel your eyebrows knit together.

“Stay?” you ask. Dina smiles, brushes your bangs away from your face. She comes around, tucks herself between your body and the back of the couch. You wrap her up in your arms, tuck her into the curve of your neck. 

She’s gone when you wake up, as well as every small bundle that filled your living room. Apparently you slept the latest, of everyone in the sleepover. 

JJ scampers into your line of sight, eyes bright. “Hey, Tater,” you mumble, wincing as your voice scratches with sleep. Guilt rises in you. JJ climbs onto the couch with you anyways. “I’m sorry I fell asleep, I - _oof_ -”

He wraps himself around you. “Why didn’t you stay with Momma last night?”

You swallow, confronting all your fears from your child’s wide-eyed viewpoint. “I wanted to make sure you all were safe down here.”

JJ frowns at that, as if it’s an absurd thing. He’s so like his mother that it’s jarring to you. “Of course we’re safe.”

You shy away from the truth. Later, after meandering conversation and pun explanations and breakfast, JJ falls asleep on your chest. You revel in that simplicity for just a moment.

* * *

There are days when you feel like so many broken pieces, and not much else. You’re cobbled together, things that clang and rattle and don’t quite fit. Pieces that are so loud in their wrongness, so blatant. So jarring, especially, when you try to make love with Dina.

So loud, that you don’t know what you want, only what you think you deserve.

Making Dina come feels like a duty. Letting her make you come feels selfish. Even when Dina plies you to come to bed, with sweet kisses and promises low in her voice - even then, there’s a wall that you come up to. You don’t really want to see what’s on the other side, not right now.

So you draw it all out, stay between her legs for as long as you can. You learn every sound that comes out of her mouth, how she tastes, the feel of every inch of her. She asks for dominance sometimes and you let it flicker through you - fuck her into the mattress, bring her up to her peak and then back away, again and again and again until she swears she’ll be good. 

She always softens at the end, wants you to hold her close, meet her eyes when she comes. When she whispers your name like something sacred. She goes to touch your face, and you flinch away, burying against her neck instead. Her skin is salty under your mouth.

You know what she wants. Sweetness. Vulnerability. As if your skin is not blood-stained up to your elbows. As if you will not leave red smears where you touch her. 

You wait for her to hate you. It never happens. 

And you can’t quite let it go, but you won’t deny her either. So you rock inside her, sweet and soft. Every whimper from her mouth feels like a prayer that she needs you to answer, and you try - you press kisses along her throat, circle her breasts and her clit, tell her she’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Tell her she’s yours.

It’s only at this point that she comes, wrapping her legs around your waist and pulling you deeper into her body, as if you can become one person. And part of you wants to twist away, so you don’t infect her too - but you give in. You pour every ounce of yourself into her, give yourself over entirely. Fill her until you’re empty. Fill her until you’re gone.

* * *

It is one thing to separate your instincts from the truth, when that truth is external to you. No, you do not need to hide from that dog. No, you do not need to put bars on your son’s bedroom window.

It is another thing entirely when the truth is what’s inside you, now taken root despite your best efforts otherwise.

There is no forgetting the fact that you are a killer. 

There is no forgetting the fact that you are a mother.

You wrap so many contradictions into yourself that you feel like a prism, refracting something pure and simple into complexity. You think, as you consider finding a lockbox for your personal weapons: no wonder you are so distrusting of your body, of your mind.

You close yourself off when Dina comes to you in bed. You dip your head when she stands in front of you, between your legs while you’re seated. She touches your hair softly, then the skin at the nape of your neck. Her fingers drift over those fragile ligaments, over the point of your pulse in your neck. 

She’s asked already if you want to talk about it, and you’ve brushed her off again. But you are a thing made of contradictions, and so this doesn’t stop you from reaching for her. Mercifully, it doesn’t stop her from holding you. 

You know she can’t absolve you. It doesn’t stop you from telling her, again and again -

“I want to be good for you.”

Uncertainty knits along her brows. She cups your cheek. “What makes you think you aren’t?”

 _Everything_ , you want to say. _All the failure I wrote into your skin, and into mine_.

Your hair falls in front of your face, loose. Dina brushes it back, strand by strand, gentle and easy. “Ellie,” she whispers, voice as soft as it was at the dance. “You can let yourself be happy with me.”

Somewhere inside you, you’re twisted up - a spring, coiled and ready. Your hands shake. You lean up to kiss her anyways.

You have one rule that you’re finally able to voice - Dina comes first. You’ll fuck her however she asks, for as long as she wants. You’re not so distrusting of your body and mind that you can’t do this. You’ll bend all your pain to your will, if it means you can hear Dina cry out. Gasp your name like something sacred.

And she is so goddamn beautiful. 

How she takes pleasure from everything, is always eager for you. How tactile she is, how she folds into you at night and reaches for you when you wander back to bed. The softness of her breasts and thighs and belly, that belie all her strength. You can’t help but give to her, over and over and over. Because she’s _beautiful_ , trembling, slick and open for you, begging for you inside her -

You will never deny her. How could you, as you watch her take ahold of your fingers (instead of pushing you away), take you inside herself (instead of rejecting you like some dead thing, like something that tried to assimilate into the greater beauty around it and failed), somehow pull you deeper at the apex of each thrust?

She smites all your darkness like something holy, turns you into something bright and needed - and when she flutters back down to earth, she takes your face in her hands and whimpers how good you are.

You want to believe her. You really do.

Part of you - a small, angry part of you - waits for her to roll over when she’s finished, to say she’s too tired to reciprocate. She never does, of course. She gives and gives and gives until you think you will overflow. 

Some things are easy, as a result. Easi _er_.

You know you’ve been working up towards something, in slivers of increments. It’s so, so slow that you’ve hardly noticed the progress, hardly noticed what’s become a shred of normalcy now, instead of something that is dodged and danced around and deflected.

For all the years you’ve been with her, something is looser in you now. Something has shifted, by just a millimeter.

You’ve found yourself asking her to put you in increasingly vulnerable positions - scenarios that are almost the exact opposite of what you allow for yourself.

You can’t take her from behind without feeling the weight of your switchblade in your hand, feeling a throat open up under your calculated, swift movements. But you shudder under the feeling of her palms on your shoulder blades, how her mouth travels down your spine - how you can’t see her, how every moment of the act is _trust_ and _love_ and _yes_...

At first, you had thought you wanted to punish yourself, remind yourself of the shadows that lurked around you. You didn’t realize until much later - until maybe, actually, right _now_ \- that this is what allows you to finally let go.

Her hand on the back of your neck, or on your throat, just soft pressure - it feels like permission that you’ve never received, permission to _not_ fight back. She runs her thumb under your jaw, presses against your pulse while she fucks you, always tells you that you’re good -

And for once, you don’t feel like a dying, rotting thing, sinking into the dirt only to bloom spores. You feel coaxed back to life. You feel _worth_.

Now, Dina rolls her shoulders and glances sidelong at the bedside clock - you remember with a jolt that you both have to be up early tomorrow - and then snuggles closer. You’re prone on the bed and you press your whole side against her, sigh as her voice ghosts over you. “You want to?”

You answer her with an open-mouthed kiss, leaning forward into her warmth. It’s meandering and slow. When you pull away, she follows, a smile growing on her face. 

“You want me to tell you what to do?” she murmurs. You nod, and then she’s kissing you again.

She breaks away, lets little kisses land on your cheekbones, your nose, your forehead. You feel it fluttering in you again, that feeling you’ve never allowed yourself to look at fully, that thing that Dina gives to you so willingly - _care_.

She plays with a lock of your hair, nuzzles the curve of your neck, and you lean into her, an old instinct that you no longer fight. “Why don’t you get on your hands and knees for me, sweet girl,” Dina sighs, and you whimper and kneel on the mattress, obeying. 

After Seattle - after you acted with so much confrontation, demanded so much of her, dragged her into that dark, cold, wet place - you almost wanted her to yell at you. To use you, to take you however she wanted.

Dina does no such thing. Her hands are light, soft and warm over your skin, down to the base of your spine. She rubs circles there with her thumbs, easing warmth into you until your back arches, until a long sigh leaves your mouth and your shoulders ease down. 

“That’s it, baby,” Dina murmurs into your neck, flushed and sweat-stained. Her lips dance over your pulse, one hand going to your breasts. The other slips down between your legs, where you’re already wet for her. Your hips rock of their own accord and you wince, feeling your instincts take over again, shying away from this even as heat and pleasure spark inside you -

“Grind down on me, that’s right,” Dina sighs, and something light flutters in your chest, preens. “Does that feel good, love?”

“Yes,” you whimper, head hanging low, and you can’t stop yourself, hips jerking now. You lose yourself in her, in how her thighs bracket yours, how her lips travel along your neck; how she kisses you, opens you, so that all your sounds find a place in her.

It isn’t long before you come like that, into her hand - slick and gasping, as shudders wrack your body. You surge and twist and she holds you there, unyielding, eternal.

It’s high and _fast_ , and coming down feels like falling. You suck down a breath and it’s too tight, too sharp - 

She eases you down into the mattress and you gasp because something is _gone_ , something you always expected to be there is _gone_. It’s clumsy, how you stagger forward she catches you and you’re gasping, crying, gulping for air as this somatic response surges through you in waves -

Shame boils up in your stomach and Dina just curls over you, rocks you both from side to side, tangles your legs together and tucks your head into the crook of her neck -

“I’m sorry,” you gasp, because you’re supposed to be _strong_ , because you’re twenty-seven and a mother and a killer and you’re crying in your wife’s arms after she’s made love to you, crying because ~~your father~~ he’s dead and ~~please, just let me tell you how much I love you~~ she’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do about it, _nothing_ , so why does letting go hurt so damn much?

You cry yourself out like that, twisted and confused. Dina just holds you, blots your tears with a tissue, wraps you up as you’re drifting away.

And it goes on like that.

There are parts of you that were torn open - whether by others or yourself, you can’t remember anymore. Dina finds all those places, fills them with a soft light. The feeling of her inside you is like something needed and unstated, simultaneously earned and given freely.

Your days are still gray and low, so at her urging and your therapist’s, you wrap something new into your attempted routines: medication.

Two weeks in and you feel like a lump of flesh, despite your therapist’s urging that your body just needs time to adjust. The pills cut through your haze, even you out - but they also halve your desire, until it feels like your body is just a series of lags, responding four counts too late to sweet stimuli. 

Dina tells you that she doesn’t care, and you try to believe her. But it all feels fated, inevitable, that something necessary like this would swoop in - and, yes, help you, but also excise unnecessary pleasures from your life.

Until one morning, when you feel Dina watching you in the bathroom, turning the pill bottle over in your hands.

“What if you take those at night?”

You can’t help it - you scoff. As if simple solutions like _just take it at night_ have ever worked for you. But Dina levels you with a hard look, and you falter.

“I don’t know what that’s gonna do,” you say truthfully, glancing down. Anger and grief swell in you - of _course_ this would happen, this is exactly how your fucking life goes, no single thing can ever be _easy_ -

And then Dina is there. She gently peels the pill bottle out of your hands, sets it on the counter. Her gaze is open, earnest when she speaks. “Take it afterwards, baby.” 

Then her hand is a warm pressure on your back and she’s walking back to bed, and you’re floored that such a simple solution never occurred to you.

It takes time, to work back up to where you were, to figure out what you need now. Dina is with you every step of the way, sweet and unwavering. Eventually, her bright laughter fills your bedroom more than your exasperated, frustrated groans. Eventually, her slipping inside you makes anticipation coil in your belly, instead of dread.

Dina won’t deny you a thing - she never does. But even still, you ask, for the ceremony of it - as a reminder that you’re hers, that no one can take you from her anymore.

You're sweating and ready and she's golden and beautiful in your arms. She's got three fingers easing between your legs nothing but softness in her eyes as she watches you shake and moan. “Please,” you whimper. “Please, can I come?”

And Dina’s answer is as immediate and soft as a feather that falls to the earth, as a puzzle piece that slots into place - “Of course, baby, of course” - and you arch and cry out. Her voice drifts down around you, settles like something sweet and warm, coaxing you along.

“Good girl,” she sighs, as you twist and spasm under her. “There you are, my good girl,” and you sob out all your love for her until your throat is raw and your cheeks are wet and you’re no longer all twisted up inside, coiled and tense and ready - you’re just hers, hers, hers.

* * *

You get a little more bold, here and there. Bold in how much you ask of her. Bold in how much trust you put in her, in yourself.

All your life has been a fight, holding yourself up, guarding yourself - grasping for another handhold, and another, until your muscles scream and your skin cracks and whatever soul is inside your body flickers and wavers.

And shame, shame is still heavy in your blood, like a permanent thing, a thing that will never erode away. You don’t know how repentance works, exactly. Or prayer. You’ve always eschewed those mechanisms, leaned hard into the tang and heat of violence - so hard, you now realize, that almost everything else has faded away.

You want something else to hold you up.

You show Dina how you want to be tied up: with your arms above your head on the headboard, low enough so your elbows are bent, so you don’t dislocate anything. You don’t need to deal with that again.

She settles over you, checks in constantly - kisses your wrists and your palms before wrapping them up, nuzzles the very tips of your fingers. Intimacy overflows from her, in that way that it only does for Dina - who can make any stolen, seconds-long moment feel like an ocean’s worth of love. She’s taken her shirt off and sat herself in your lap and you just kiss her neck, nuzzle her, all sweet affection. She kisses you on the mouth when she’s done, touches your cheekbones lightly.

“Okay?”

“Mhmm.”

“Words?”

She hardly progresses towards you needing them in the first place, but Dina made you come up with them all the same, once bonds became involved.

“Pineapple,” you say, a smile tugging at one corner of your mouth. 

Dina snorts. “I still don’t believe those things actually exist.” She twists away from you for a moment, wiggles out of her shorts, ties her hair back. She straddles you again, warm and heavy against your naked body. Her fingertips dance along your ribcage, and you smile.

“Ready?”

You close your hands into fists once, hearing the headboard creak. Your voice is small when you speak, breathy, emerging from the back of your throat.

“Yeah.”

She tips your jaw up and kisses you again. You relax into your restraints, feeling out the comfortable certainty of your willful surrender. A giving over.

You don’t want to fight anymore.

Dina kisses down your neck and you breathe deeply, eyes fluttering closed, letting yourself hang in the here and now - letting it all be enough.

“My pretty girl, all tied up for me,” Dina sighs. She moves over you and you inhale at her words, rock up against her just so. She cups the side of your face, brushes your lips with her thumb, and you can’t help it - you turn your head so you can suck on her, draw her thumb into your mouth, swallow around her. Fire licks in your belly at the thought that she could do whatever she wanted to you - that that’s exactly what she _won’t_ do. 

You’re safe with her.

Her mouth is soft on your neck, your breasts, the curve of your hip bones. She takes a detour up to your mouth and kisses you, soft and full, whispers your name between your lips like a prayer. Rests her forehead against yours for a moment, so you breathe each other in. Then she moves again.

“Sweet, beautiful girl,” she sighs, gently painting bruises down your body, draping herself over you. Her hair shines in the low light, drags down over your body, sweet-smelling and warm. And you’re so, so, so lucky, how she takes care of you, knows every part of you, even the parts that are covered in blood. It makes you rock and spread your legs for her, whimper as she kisses the scar on your right side, as she drags her tongue along the crease where your thigh meets your body.

She settles between your legs, nibbles along your inner thighs. You wish you could touch her as she touches you, tastes you, makes your breath catch - but there’s something just as thrilling about watching her work on you, tie you up and spread you open. Somehow, the pleasure that shoots up your spine is brighter, hotter, making you curl into yourself. Your hips cant and twitch and you whimper, so empty, so _needy_ -

“You like this, sweet girl?” she asks, fluttering over you, eyes dark and liquid. You bite your lip and nod. “You like when I take care of you?”

“I love you,” you gasp, because you can’t stop yourself. You can’t stop your affection from pouring out of you from this vulnerable place, this place where only Dina can take you. You watch her smile at your words, watch her kiss you between your legs, eyes never leaving yours.

“I love you too, baby,” Dina sighs, mouth hovering over where you need her. “So, so much.” And then she’s tasting you again, and your world flips over.

She kisses your belly at the same time that she slips a finger inside you, just a flicker of being filled, and it makes you arch and sigh. Her tongue meanders over your clit, sending little shocks of pleasure up your spine, as you rock slowly into her touch. You whimper and gasp as she strokes you, long and smooth and deep, and a smile drips around her next words. “You want more, sweetheart?”

A strangled sound twists in your throat, like you’re trying to talk and stop yourself at the same time, and Dina must notice - must see how the words rise in your throat and stay there, clogged and cramped. 

“You can tell me, baby,” she murmurs, and her eyes are dark pools, nothing but promising. “Tell me what you want.”

It comes out small, washed out, but it’s words nonetheless - “More, _please_ ” - and Dina smiles and kisses you, gives it to you.

You twist and buck up into her hands because your skin is on _fire_ and you need her deeper, deeper - and she just shushes you, reassures you. You tell her exactly what you want and she’s right _there_ for you, always and true, in a way that makes your whimpers grow into cries. 

“Dina, please, _please_ -” You can _hear_ the sounds she makes as she moves inside you. All you can do is spread your legs further, whimper and gasp and hope for more, more -

Dina chuckles, low in her throat, and your spine arches at the sound. “I know, sweet girl. Almost there, baby, I can feel it -” And you preen and clamp down on her, give yourself over to every stroke and twist inside you, gasp and cry out -

“Can you come for me?” Dina gasps and you bite your lip, nod rapidly - speech is out of the question now and you hardly care, you only want to come for Dina, be good for her, so, so good -

It happens with a wrench and a cry and you’re coming, _hard_ , swallowing Dina up and reveling in all her sweet praise and warmth - “There we are, that’s right. So good for me, so good.” Bright, white hot pleasure pulses over you, washes up on your body, shimmering - behind your knees and between your shoulders, in places you didn’t know was possible...

You’re breathing hard, _gasping_ and utterly spent, and Dina’s right there. Still inside you, bringing you down gently, letting you ride out every aftershock on her fingers. Crooning - “That’s right, that’s right” - and you inhale sharply, feeling relaxation start to creep up your spine, pool in your chest. It overflows when she straddles you again, tips your jaw up with wet fingers and kisses you - and you’re nothing but pliant softness, and her tongue in your mouth is the most welcome intrusion.

At this point, you ask her to untie you with a whimper. You feel your restraints loosen gently, and you ease back into motion, rolling one wrist and then the other. She runs her hands gently over your wrists, presses kisses along your forearms, all with utmost care.

“Still okay?” she murmurs against your skin, and you nod. You kiss her palms, her mouth. You hold her against you, one hand buried in her thick hair, nuzzling along the crown of her head. She isn’t tired though, by how she walks her hand along your ribcage, swirls around that whorl of scar tissue lightly.

It’s nice, now that there’s less confusion, less apprehension. At first you thought Dina would think that you were punishing yourself, triggering yourself all over again. You grasped for insufficient words and cobbled them into subpar sentences and communicated, as best you could: 

“I just want to be yours.”

Now she nuzzles into your side, and your eyes meet her with expectation. “I can go again,” you murmur, and she smiles. You nod when she moves to tie you up. Then she nudges you over, opens you, leans down to press soft kisses over the bruises she’s already left.

You’re on a fuzzy, fluttering high by the time she eases her cock inside you. You pant and twitch and she settles into an easy rhythm, cards her fingers through your hair, draws every whimper out of you. 

“This feel good, baby?” she whispers, and you know you’ll soon be lost in everything that she’s giving to you, anything that you want. And oh, the things that you _want_ -

“Deeper,” you whimper, and she hums and slips your legs over her shoulders, settling in slowly. She trails kisses along your sweat-stained forehead, nuzzles your mussed hair, rocks her hips.

“You’re doing so well for me, baby,” she murmurs, shifting just so into a faster rhythm, and you _keen_ and gasp. “Telling me what you want, yeah? Such a good girl, telling me what feels good.”

“Yes,” you sigh, and you’re shaking now, hips twitching, heat and pressure growing in your belly. You’re close, close, _close_ , and you _need_ her. “Dina, Dina _please_ -”

“Take it, baby,” Dina breathes against your skin. “It’s yours, take what’s yours, come for me -”

You do. You can never deny her, after all.

Your vision whites out, and you suck down air, and there’s nothing but her now, nothing, nothing -

The tension in your spine leaves last, and you practically ooze down into the mattress. She unties you in your afterglow, gentle and patient and sweet.

She kisses along your knuckles and rubs feeling back into your palms, pulls a blanket up over you and tucks you in close against her body. Every kiss to your skin spreads against you like watercolors, until you feel light and translucent - fragile in a good way, in a way that beckons love. In a way you’ve never felt before, if you’re honest with yourself.

You’re drifting off and you feel another urge to try to explain it, to rationalize it, why you need what you need - this proof of the trust between you, so demonstrable and evident that you can hold it in your hands. But you stumble over the words, can’t quite get them to sound right.

Dina waits until there’s a natural pause in your stumbled explanation. Then - “Hey.”

You look up, meet her gaze.

“Whatever you want,” she breathes, “we’ll do it.” 

* * *

JJ takes to swimming like...well, like a fish out of water.

You feel his fear and frustration, in how he jerkily reaches for you in the shallows, fists his hands in your soaked shirt. 

“We can try again tomorrow, Tater,” you say, trying to inject calm into your voice.

You can hear his frown when he speaks, his disbelief. “But I want it to happen _now_.”

“I know, bud,” you murmur, as you trace a lock of his wild hair. He leans into your hand. “I know.”

* * *

It happens in stops and starts.

Now, when Dina wants your heaviness on top of her, you feel like you’re her equal, like you can accept as much from her as you give. Draining yourself now seems absurd, almost - if you drain yourself, there’s no energy left. You can’t love her anymore.

You know you should live for yourself, and not her. But you figure it's at least a start. You heave yourself over that finish line, scrambling on your hands and knees, and marvel at all that your body's gone through to get to this point.

You try to let yourself be everything that’s been taken from you. Sometimes it’s only crude approximations. Sometimes you don’t know what to say to Dina, how to put into words what you’re feeling. Sometimes being a mother feels more like guesswork and less like knowing.

Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes you feel like you could sleep anywhere, to escape the pounding in your head, the uncontrollable mess of all the world. Sometimes you’d rather shut down, drift along like a dead satellite, be pulled into other orbits.

Other times, you push yourself through. You find the other side, and you swear you’ll stay there.

You never do, but at the very least - now you know it’s there.

* * *

Some days are worse.

You quiver and tremble and jolt in and out of your body, when a sound slots perfectly into the spinning spoke that is your mind - shrieks _danger, danger_ -

She’s been up at the dam for two weeks and you’ve felt small and useless, reading failure into everything - into how JJ only picks at his vegetables at dinner, despite your encouragement; into how your most recent painting is still a shapeless, flat thing, and no amount of iteration will put form or meaning into it; into the nightmares that wrack your mind, that leave you reaching for the empty side of the bed.

Cat comes over, critiques your painting in a familiar language that makes you feel comforted - at least you two still understand each other. You go on long walks with JJ, admiring how your shadow and his blend softly with the afternoon light, hazy and blotting. He still fits in your arms, and you take every chance you can to carry him, hold him close to your body, as if you can make up for all those months of absence, so long ago.

You throw yourself into your work, into all the form and obligation that others expect you to take. You clamber up onto the roof, patch a leak that’s worked its way into the attic. You listen, on the metaphorical edge of your seat, as JJ tells you the plot of a book he’s been reading, hands clenched into small fists in excitement. You walk him over to Jules’ house, watch the two of them play with Jules’s dog in the backyard.

Jules could be Riley’s younger brother, with his dark skin and wide, bright smile. When the dog curls up at Ellie’s feet, all played-out, he and JJ kick a ball back and forth, making up rules about points and winning as they go along. 

Then Dina comes home and it all comes out like a waterfall, like an unstoppering, like pressure that will not relent, that has nowhere to go but _out_.

Talking, as you expected, is painful.

But by the time she takes you to bed, you feel lighter. You want to hate how you go back and forth, how you still can’t settle on one place in your mind - but Dina just continues to take the bad days with the good.

Maybe you can, too.

“You wanna go first?” she murmurs and you sigh and nod. Rules be damned. 

Maybe you deserve this.

Maybe deserving isn't the point.

Her touch is all soft fire as she straddles you, unbuttons your shirt. She lingers over the cuffs of your shirtsleeves, unbuttoning those too. Kissing along your fingers, rocking slowly. She’s all heavy warmth and you whimper, arch.

“Sweet, needy girl,” she sighs, popping the button on your jeans. Your hips rock up as she pushes down. “You wanna feel good?”

How can you say no now? How can you say no as she crawls down between your legs, opens you on her tongue, rocks and flickers against you and tells you how good you taste -

It isn't long at all before you’ve come once and you can’t stop yourself, can’t find it in yourself to put those walls up anymore - you want to be fucked, you want her inside you - 

She works you up to exactly that, with your legs wrapped around her waist. She takes your hand, reaches down so you feel where she’s joined to you, and you almost come right _there_ -

It’s all slow and deep and smooth, the way she pushes all the way up inside you, withdraws almost entirely, and repeats - over and over and over again, opening you until she’s all that there is -

“My girl,” Dina sighs, voice soft even as exertion pools on her brow, spreads like flush down her neck and chest. She's got one hand down between your legs, swirling against your clit, sending white-hot spasms up and inside you. You’re whimpering now on each thrust - quivering, amorphous sounds that you can’t control, that stoke the fire under your skin even as that fire makes you keen even more. All an endless cycle, building, building -

“Yours, yours, yours -” You're babbling now, because that’s the only truth you know, how much you belong to her. “ _Fuck_ , please - need you so much Dina, I need - I can’t - fuck _please_ , please -”

“I know, baby,” Dina whimpers, and you frame her face in your hands, pull her closer. Her mouth latches onto your neck just as your hands go to her low back, _feeling_ how she fucks you, how she gives so much just to pleasure you -

“Dina, Dina, _fuck_ , oh god -”

“Yes, baby,” she sighs. “Hold on to me, sweet girl, I’ve got you” - and you  _ sob _ , because she’s got one of your legs over her shoulders and she’s so  _ deep _ until it’s all that you feel, all that you are, the place where you and her meet -

And then there’s a shaking, trembling crescendo that rips through you, swells behind your eyelids and bursts from your mouth and it’s all you can do to hold on to her voice - “That’s right, Ellie, yes” - and wetness is  _ leaving _ your body, splashing between you and her, and Dina’s voice pitches up in laughter as you  _ wail _ , as she wraps you up and takes you far, far away -

“Like that, like that, oh  _ fuck  _ Ellie,  _ yes _ -”

And you’re gone, but in the best way - because she’s there with you.

* * *

You don’t know how or when you come back to your body. Maybe you will just fucking disintegrate, float away...

Then something flickers inside you and you twitch, keen. The barriers of Dina's arms around you become known only by you squirming against them. You realize that Dina's still hovering over you, between your legs, inside you.

She wrings it all out of you until you’re pliant, whimpering, clinging to her like she’s the only real thing in the universe. 

She brings you down so, so gently that by the time you’ve relearned yourself, she’s withdrawn from your body. Your eyes flicker open and she’s brushing your bangs back from your face, concern written across her brow.

“You with me, baby?” 

“Mhmmm.” It comes out in a low grating sound, deep in your throat, in contrast to Dina’s high, bright chuckle. “Gonna make that up to you,” you murmur, managing to flop over onto your front, half-draped against her naked body.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Dina says, grinning around her words. She cards her fingers through your hair and you let your eyes drift closed, letting her affection wash over you until you’ve gathered enough energy to nuzzle down her body.

You have to catch your breath again when you’re down between her legs, laughing against the inside of her thigh. “You’ve ruined me,” you chuckle. Dina goes to retort until you gently suck her clit into your mouth, and while she whimpers and rocks you softly drag your tongue up her folds, humming all the while. 

There’s no pressure, and you linger there, drinking her down. She whimpers your name when you slip inside her, and you lean up to wrap one arm around her while the other works between her legs. You feel drunk, lazy, wrung-out and reduced - and the only thing that matters is Dina, stroking your cheek, wrapping an arm around you as you reach inside her.

You want to be inside every part of her, call her yours and you hers - and when she clings to you and comes with your name in her mouth, it feels like all your prayers, and hers, are answered.

* * *

You wake up from the arms of a nightmare, and roll into the arms of your wife.

Anxiety waits around every corner of your well-known, well-loved house. Exasperation rears in you, and you try to ease it back down. Sometimes it works.

JJ tells you about an assignment he had for school, to pick someone who is a hero to him. Around his mouthful of oatmeal, he says that he picked you. You’re shocked into silence, just staring at the back of his head as he scampers away from the breakfast table.

Dina sits across from you in the Tipsy Bison, holds your hand in the low light. Under the table, her foot traces your ankle in precise, repetitive movements. Her eyes are dark, shining, happy.

You let warm water trickle over the stubs on your left hand. They’ve hurt today, more than usual. Maybe from the weather, maybe just from your mind. You pat them dry gently, then fiddle with the wedding band that sits adjacent to them.

You think Dina is asleep when you slide into bed, but when you wrap an arm around her she inhales and shifts back, falling further into the curve of your body. She takes your left hand, threads your fingers together with hers. Presses you against her belly.

You’re not whole, but it’s enough.

Broken thing. Loved thing.

You’ll try again tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @watery-sun.


End file.
